Hollywood On The Recession: Told You So
by Tom Shillue
Have you heard?
According to this story in the Guardian, Hollywood is geared up and ready for the recession, and it seems they are eager to entertain us with a series of big-budget “I told you so’s”.
Baz Luhrmann is all set to mount a re-make of The Great Gatsby because, according to him, “People will need an explanation of where we are and where we’ve been, and The Great Gatsby can provide that explanation.”
Oh, boy. Here we go again. Do I really need another lesson in why the American dream is a charade, and our materialism leads to emptiness and despair? I’ve heard this all before.
I get bored just thinking about The Great Gatsby. Ok, I know, it’s a classic. Beautiful language, great characters, blah, blah, blah. Then why did I find it so tedious? I can’t really blame F. Scott Fitzgerald. I blame professor Fournier. He wanted me to know the true meaning of Gatsby.
In college back in the late 80’s I took a literature class called “The 20’s” because it sounded like fun. I thought I’d be reading about speakeasy’s, flappers, gangsters and molls–you know, Runyonesqe stuff. I really should have known what was in store for me, but when you are a college student, you don’t yet know how the whole system works. Of course, what was in store for me was a daily indictment of American values along with a full-throated defense of socialism. Professor Fournier followed every novel we read–Gatsby, Babbit, An American Tragedy, with a long “discussion” comparing “The Gilded Age” to “The Decade of Greed”. The avarice! The entitlement! The hubris!
“Don’t you see the similarities?” he would say. “We are doing it all over again. We just never learn our lesson in this country–by the way, did you know that Cuba has 100% health coverage under Fidel Castro?”
For Fournier, it was as if the 1920’s existed for only one reason–to show us all what a colossal mistake we made in electing Ronald Reagan President. So, we were told, just as the 1920’s led to the Great Depression, the go-go 80’s would end in another, even worse depression. And we would have no one to blame but ourselves. Well, here it is, upon us. My professor was right. The era of unbridled prosperity that began when I was in junior high school has come to an abrupt halt, only 20 short years after he predicted it would. I can’t believe I ever doubted him.
Lately I keep reading opinions about the current financial crisis that claim “we are all to blame.” We somehow all share a collective guilt because of our greed and arrogance. Sounds just like the theme from my CliffsNotes of The Great Gatsby. But Gatsby broke the law-he was a bootlegger. I didn’t do that. And I don’t have a jumbo sub-prime mortgage. I didn’t squander all my friends’ money in a fraudulent hedge fund. How are we all to blame?
The answer? We’re not! The solution? Throw that hedge-fund-ponzi-scheme guy in jail, then let home prices continue falling until I can buy a house the old fashioned way–with a reasonable down payment, and a nice loan from Jimmy Stewart.
Now, what can we learn from F. Scott Fitzgerald? Hmmm…
1. Gatsby was a jerk.
2. Don’t be like him.
A bit of a CliffsNotesy summary perhaps. Maybe I should re-read the book, but I think I’ll skip this re-make. I’m not in college and I don’t need my classics to come with an “explanation” anymore.
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31 Comments
Great — Hollywood’s miserable, reductive little takes on great classic literature. Here come the stupid people.
Well you threw a little bit of everything into this article! Nicely done– Another remake??? Hollywood is stagnant. You should of told your professor on the Castro comment “Yeah but have you seen the hospitals?”
Essentially it sounds like a remake of the 1940s movie version of Gatsby, starring Alan Ladd. The movie seems like it was written by collaborators who couldn’t quite agree on what “angle” to take: a sensational pulpy approach (it starts out with Gatsby in a car chase, shooting it out with rival bootleggers), or a more “politically correct” approach (back in the days when the Old Left were using the term “politically correct” as it was first intended). The latter approach comes through in attempts to imply that wealthy free-spenders like Gatsby somehow brought about the Great Depression and were thereby punished for their “sins.” In other words traditional American puritanism (the Gatsbys needed to be punished for defying the conventions of small-town America) married to the new puritanism of the Left (the Gatsbys needed to be punished because they were rich and lacked “social conscience”).
For purely “artistic” reasons I would like to see a GOOD version of that movie ( Gatsby ) made. I don’t think Luhrman will do it though. “Moulin Rouge” was the first movie I walked out on since “Mr Mike’s Mondo Video”
I double dog dare you to read Madame Bovary…
Baz Luhrman is a poseur Australian idiot. Thank you for pointing out the lunacy. Probably because “Benjamin Button” is doing well (came from a Fitzgerald story), some “genius” exec bought Luhrman’s load of crap idea and we’ll have Naomi Watts as Daisy and DiCaprio as Gatsby doing his Robert “Bitter Old Pretty Boy” Redford imitation.
Oh, I do love this site, and thank you Tom! My oldest son had to read “The Great Gatsby” and we had fun discussing the real meaning of the novel while he wrote tedius pap for his socialist teacher. (Are there any other kind?)
The reason that Gatsby was such a failure is because he thought the trappings of wealth were the reason to acquire wealth, instead of the joy that wealth creation brings. Contrast Gatsby’s emptiness with the happiness of Hank Reardon, watching the blue of Reardon metal pouring from his furnace. Oh, yeah, I can see THAT being a topic for a college or high school paper. Heh. Mention Ayn Rand to any of them and watch your grade plummet instantly to a “D”.
No self respecting person should waste their time with a re-make of anything Fitzgerald (I’m looking at you Eric Roth). I believe the author of this post is correct. Fitzgerald wasn’t teaching a lesson in Gatsby about the evils of unbridled capitalism. so much as his dark view of humanity and the loathing of his own social class. Gatsby wasn’t near the jerks Tom and Daisy were.
Here is how some of the casting for the latest version of “Gatsby” might go:
Tom Cruise is the Nick Carraway character. If he can play Claus Von Stauffenberg, then he can play a bond broker seduced by all that glitters. Charlie Sheen will be his understudy.
Dustin Hoffman will play the Meyer Woflsheim character…but the name will be changed to Madoff.
George Clooney will play Gatsby…but the script will be altered so his dying words will be, “Rosebud…Daisy…Bush”
Scarlett Johansson will play Daisy.
Josh Brolin will play the Tom Buchanan, in the same makeup that he used in the Oliver Stone’s “W.”
Jessica Simpson will play Myrtle Wilson in what would truly be her breakout role.
Mickey Rourke will play George Wilson. His character will be given a Brandoesque speech as in “On the Waterfront,” about how the common man got screwed by capitalism.
Lydia Hearst…the model and daughter of Patty Hearst…will play Jordan Baker. Her character will spend a lot of time in front of the mirror admiring her own beauty and repeating whispering, “Tania?”
Banana -
Well you threw a little bit of everything into this article! Nicely done– Another remake??? Hollywood is stagnant. You should of told your professor on the Castro comment “Yeah but have you seen the hospitals?”
And then the professor would have marked an asterisk by his name while muttering “capitalistic pig” under his breath. That is the lefts idea of tolerance.
I was forced to read this in high school. I have never bothered to endure any of the film versions and it sounds like I’m not missing a thing.
I’m no fan of Luhrman or remakes.
Having lived there for 14 months, I was astounded at the gaudy displays of wealth in Hollywood. Exactly how are they qualified to teach the rest of us about greed? Do they really think we’re that stupid?
I “Like” Nicole Kidman, since “Dead Calm” and Luhrman since “Strictly Ballroom”. But, I will admit that remakes of Gatsby tend to tank at the box office. Something I would avoid seeing .
I think you have misread “The Great Gatsby,” which truly is one of the greatest American novels ever published. Fitzgerald’s novel was not at all critical of wealth and prosperity. Instead, it remarked on the corruption of morality that comes with unrestrained greed and materialism. “Gatsby” was a defense of a traditional American value (thirft, living within your means) that, in the 1920s, had been perverted by a form of capitalism unmoored from a moral foundation. It certainly was not, as you imply, a novel about boot-legging.
When you say that you are “not to blame” for the current economic crisis, you cherry pick. OK, you are not a hedge-fund manager or the beneficiary of a sub-prime mortage. But this is a participatory democracy. While there are criminals in this sordid drama, much of this crisis was birthed via a perfectly legal framework devised by a government we put into office. As long as the Dow was at 14,000, who cared if the system was really working? Right?
Some historical anachornisms aside, I think “Gatsby” is nearly a perfect distillation of today’s crisis. He painted a portrait of the bored mega-rich, unhinged from traditional American values, who end up destroying everything they touch and never pay for it. Millions of American today lived far beyond their means, and were enabled by private enterprise and government. Greed and materialism trumped traditional American values.
You may be right that “everyone” is not to blame, but literally millions are to blame. And, to me, this shows that for now America has lost sight of important values.
10 bucks says that the movie version of Atlas Shrugged will somehow blame Dagny, Francisco, Galt, Rearden and the prime movers for the economic stalemate while praising Jim Taggart, the “academics,” the boys in Washington and the rest of the looters and moochers “who care about important social issue and society more than money.”
Just watch. It will be the greatest perversion of a great novel you’ve ever seen attempted.
The Great Gatsby is my favorite book – by the time I was “forced” to read it in Junior year highschool I had already read it twice.
This is the first time I’ve heard the “fallacy of the American dream” take – I’ve always taken a much smaller more interpersonal take on the subject. Gatsby was in love with a shallow socialite so he did everything to gain material wealth to try to impress her and it ultimately led to his death.
If anything, its a celebration of the “American Dream”. Gatsby is a nobody and builds his way into wealth (albeit he takes some shortcuts). The tragedy is he does so to impress people that come from wealth.
Maybe they should get Paris Hilton to play Daisy.
And the whole “We’re all to Blame” angle just a ploy to get us ALL to pay for it.
Don’t ask me how, but I’ve gotten hold of the transcript of Baz’s studio pitch meeting.
INT. STUDIO HEAD HONCHO’S OFFICE – DAY
LUHRMANN sashayes in. Following two steps behind, Nicole Kidman walks submissively — in LEATHER RESTRAINT HARNESS and attached BALL GAG.
Luhrmann is dressed in 1920s period costume. Mid-calf FLAPPER’S DRESS, tight fitting top, hair cut in sexy LOUISE BROOKS style.
The studio head and twenty FAWNING assistants sit expectantly around a desk bigger than Rosie O’Donnells mutantly bloated ego.
LUHRMANN
Wotcha mates. Thank me for seeing
you. That’s right drongos, finally
gone the full Pricilla. Feeling luckier
than a couple a sheep shearers on a
date with Dolly. Okay… Great Gatsby!!
(BEAT)
Picture this… A MUSICAL…
We relocate to Paris, and
this is gonna knock yer panties off…
Our hero winks at his captive audience.
LUHRMANN (CONT’D)
…picture this… we use the movie
as a mirror on the Bush Gulag
by using pop tunes from today…
Picture this… Leonardo as Gatsby…
breaks into American Idiot by Green Day…
You’re certainly not alone in that interpretation. That’s exactly the take I had on it when I read it. To read political messages into it seems tendentious in the extreme, although I must confess I don’t know Fitzgerald’s thoughts while writing it. I wonder if these anti-consumerist vaporings about the book come from the same people who think Doris Lessing is a “significant author” and “Titus Andronicus” is Shakespeare’s brief in favor of vegetarianism.
I’m trying to decide is I should reread Gatsby now; I despised it when I read it a few years ago. I thought it was a shallow, pointless story with vapid and boring people is sort of drifted around until they finally died and I was let free. I didn’t see beauty or greatness in it. Kind of like “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” in that way. I don’t see the point of showing insanely self-obsessed people meandering through life without any serious relationships or awareness. That’s TMZ, not literature.
So, the movie sounds totally awesome.
I always thought the novel was vapid. Its popularity with posers is purely because of its brevity. If it was the size of a Dickens novel poor old Baz wouldn’t be able to get through it.
Cuba had more doctors per capita than France or Britain in Somoza times (read that in The Economist this week). So maybe he was a really good guy too just like Castro. Or maybe these sort of statistics are worthless other than as throwaway lines in arguments.
Great Gatsby? A better remake would be “The Grapes of Wrath” or a sequel….what ever happened to the Joad family?
Love these posts!
Matt, 9:45 a.m.–Wow! You really think we ALL are responsible? Some bought a house with >20% down and put money in retirement account for 25 years? I disagree with your politics.
As to Great Gatsby–I think for it to be “literature” it is supposed to be read on a few levels. It works for me on the “Gatsby falls for unobtainable (and ultimately undesirable Daisy.)” When you get to the political and universal levels everybody has their take. Except in Hollywood, then THEY TELL YOU how to interpret it.
Funny comment winner: Most people rave about it b/c it is short and they’ve actually read it!
Yes, Fournier was right about Ronald Reagan. But I won’t take the rap for that one, either.
Love all the comments! First of all, Professor Fournier, or as you are now calling yourself, “MATT”, I really appreciate your post. You are the reason I wrote this and it is great to have your feedback. You have not changed a bit. JACK BAUER you are hilarious and should have your own blog. Oh, wait, you do. RDITTMAR, HESS, it seems we all agree-the one who is overanalyzing here is Professor Fourni- excuse me, “MATT”.
‘Great Gatsby’ was a beautifully written novel about a man, who as Hess accurately puts it “..was in love with a shallow socialite so he did everything to gain material wealth to try to impress her and it ultimately led to his death.
But beautifully written novels are destroyed if they’re used instead of enjoyed. If a butterfly is enjoyed, it must be let free to be itself. If it’s used, the fist crushes the butterfly and you’re left with nothing but irredescent fragments in the palm of your hand.
Luhrman will crush ‘Great Gatsby’ like Demi Moore crushed ‘The Scarlet Letter’. Sad, sad.
Hmmm, my comments seem to be disappearing into the ether. What’s going on?
Ugh, I hated “The Great Gatsby”. We had to read it in highschool. I love to read, but I couldn’t make it more then half way through the book, at which point I got fed up, set fire to it, and bought the cliff notes. If you want real classic literature try “To Kill a Mockingbird”
If Hollywood insists on remakes, why not remake something good, like 12 Angry Men. Then again, evertime Hollywood tries to remake something, it makes me run screaming from the theater (I’m looking at you, Haunting, Planet of the Apes, etc), with the rare exceptions, like The Longest Yard (the Adam Sandler version was okay) and King Kong (A little long, but Jackson did good, and Jack Black was perfect as Denham.).
F. Scott Fitzgerald sucks. Or as my father once put it: “Unreadable book becomes unwatchable movie.”
‘”This shirt cost twenty-five dollars.” she said as she held the fine silk in her trembling hands and began to weep.’
Ohh. Profound. LAME! I hated that entire book. The charters are unlikable, thin, and uninteresting. The 20’s were and incredibly prosperous time until about 1929 because Cavin Coolidge was successful in waking America up from the nightmare of Wilsonian Fascism. Then Hoover’s interventionist policies made way for the Great Depression.
Wait… What was my point? Oh, yeah! Fitzgerald sucks. SUCKS!
First of all, “The Guardian” is just stealth “Pravda.” When I read any of its articles, I do so with a huge dose of skepticism usually followed by higher blood pressure.
I agree that Gatsby was tedious and the movie was the same. It did, however, paint a fairly realistic view of that very thin slice of Americana at play. A visit to “The Breakers” (Gatsby’s home in the movie) and the other “cottages” along that particular Newport road reveals what some would call obscene conspicuous consumption, kind of like Aaron Spelling’s and so many other ostentatious celebrity homes, although I suspect parts of Spelling’s house, like the gift wrapping room, were devoted to business and qualified for depreciation.
I wonder how many of the downtrodden Hollywood libs are bringing under their ample roofs in these trying economic times?
One of the silver linings in the cloud of distortions with which ultra-liberal Hollywood is blitzing us is that it will provide future screenwriters fertile ground for a Gatsby-like sequel that pillories the hypocrisy and agenda-driven tone of the industry these days. A comedy would be the most appropriate vehicle, IMHO.
The titles alone for such an expose of Hollywood’s current mood and behavior should make for at least an hour of fun discussion among Big Hollywood fans. “Fear and Loathing at Babs’ House.” “A Funny Thing Happened to me on the Way to Reality.” “Serial – The Sequel Further South.” (”Serial” – One of my all-time favorite liberal lifestyle -lampooning movies. Bill Macy as Sam Stone was hilarious.). “‘Mayhem,’ She Wrote.” “What Did You Do in the Culture Wars, Daddy?) These are kind of lame but I’m sure others, if they choose to join, can come up with many more creative and humorous titles.
[...] knowledge of The House Unamerican Activities Committee was usually limited to lectures from their favorite college professor, wouldn’t buy it. “Phooey,” they said. There was only one explanation: anyone [...]
I can think of no better proof that Hollywood “artists” are emotionally and intellectually stunted. They’re living in their professors’ time – the Sixties – and have its worldview, a view of a world that never existed outside of Soviet agitprop.
Anyone who doesn’t re-examine his basic beliefs from time to time is not worthy of a vote and should have no voice in any level of society. The same is true for those who have no basic beliefs. They should just stay out of the marketplace of ideas, because they have no inventory. Our trouble as a nation is that liberals and politicians are, as groups, made of these “people.”
I was raised a Democrat, and lived as one, until I grew up and started to see what they really are. Then I read, and watched, and realized that America was worth saving, or conserving, just the way it was. These “people” who point their fingers at one negative thing or other that happened and shriek that, “it’s because a non-Communist America is evil!” are simply traitors to their country and should be dealt with as such.
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